Kiski Area prepared to limit any tax increase

We are currently undergoing updates to our site and are working to improve your experience on all devices that you use throughout your day. If you should find a page or a story that is not working correctly, please click here.

Thank you for your patience,

TribLIVE.com Team

As expected, the Kiski Area School Board has vowed to limit any tax increase next school year to 2.9 percent or less.

The state's tax increase ceiling limits the district to raising taxes by 2.4 mills in its Westmoreland County towns and 1.7 mills in Parks Township, Armstrong County. The current millage rates are 82.78 and 40.36, respectively.

Should the board choose to raise taxes to the state's maximum, the increase would generate nearly $600,000 for the district. That revenue would offset next school year's retirement costs, which are set to increase by $418,000.

Still, it's unclear whether the district will raise taxes at all, according to Business Manager Peggy Gillespie.

“To say anything at this point would be speculative,” she said. “We won't know whether taxes will be raised until the board really starts workshopping the preliminary budget in May. It's going to be a tough budget with the spike in the retirement rate, though.”

School districts' contributions to the state retirement plan for teachers and other state employees are expected to jump dramatically next year. Kiski Area has been among school districts that have been saving for next year's increase.

The state Department of Education calculates the maximum rate that school districts can levy each year based on several economic factors. Kiski Area's 2.9 percent maximum is about average for the Alle-Kiski Valley, with rates falling between 2.1 percent and 3.1 percent.

Board President Keith Blayden is cautiously optimistic that the district's contract with Consol Energy will help keep tax rates low.

The district collected its first Consol payment on Monday night after leasing the rights to the natural gas underneath the Kiski Area South Primary School in September. Rick Kurimsky presented the board with a $36,600 up-front payment for the five-year lease on the mineral rights underneath the former Mamont Elementary in Washington Township.

The district will collect a monthly royalty of 14.5 percent when Consol begins drilling from an offsite natural gas rig.

Kurimsky couldn't provide an estimated starting date for the operation.

Consol plans to drill into the Marcellus shale 7,000 feet below the elementary school from a rig about 5,000 feet south on Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County property, according to Kurimsky.

“It's tough to say how much energy can be extracted from the site or when drilling will actually begin,” he said, “but Kiski Area could be receiving a substantial amount of royalties from the project.”

School buildings

The future of the Laurel Point Elementary School building in Parks will be discussed next month at a public hearing.

The board will meet Jan. 23 in the Kiski Area administration building to discuss its contemplated closing and explore other options, according to Superintendent John Meighan.

He would not elaborate on what those other options entailed.

The school's closing has been in consideration since this year's reconfiguration of the district's seven elementary schools. The board will discuss, among other things, how its kindergarten through fourth-grade students would be distributed into the district's schools.

The future of the Washington Elementary school building, which will be vacant after this school year, will be discussed next month.

The board will vote Jan. 20 on whether it'll seek to sell the building privately, seek sealed bids or auction off the building.

The district auctioned its shuttered Bell-Avon Elementary School building in November for $11,000 under its $50,000 asking price.

The Washington Elementary building has not yet been appraised.

Braden Ashe is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 724-226-4673 or bashe@tribweb.com.

You are solely responsible for your comments and by using TribLive.com you agree to our
Terms of Service.

We moderate comments. Our goal is to provide substantive commentary for a general readership. By screening submissions, we provide a space where readers can share intelligent and informed commentary that enhances the quality of our news and information.

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderating decisions are subjective. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can. Because of the volume of reader comments, we cannot review individual moderation decisions with readers.

We value thoughtful comments representing a range of views that make their point quickly and politely. We make an effort to protect discussions from repeated comments either by the same reader or different readers

We follow the same standards for taste as the daily newspaper. A few things we won't tolerate: personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes), commercial promotion, impersonations, incoherence, proselytizing and SHOUTING. Don't include URLs to Web sites.

We do not edit comments. They are either approved or deleted. We reserve the right to edit a comment that is quoted or excerpted in an article. In this case, we may fix spelling and punctuation.

We welcome strong opinions and criticism of our work, but we don't want comments to become bogged down with discussions of our policies and we will moderate accordingly.

We appreciate it when readers and people quoted in articles or blog posts point out errors of fact or emphasis and will investigate all assertions. But these suggestions should be sent
via e-mail. To avoid distracting other readers, we won't publish comments that suggest a correction. Instead, corrections will be made in a blog post or in an article.